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Ronald Brownstein describes the blue wall as "the 18 states that form the blue wall, a term I coined in 2009"[3]
After the 2012 presidential election, Paul Steinhauser called "blue wall […] the cluster of eastern, Midwest and western states that have traditionally gone Democratic."[4] The earliest description of the forces creating the blue wall comes from a Houston Chronicle blogger, Chris Ladd.[5] A Republican, Ladd wrote in November 2014 that the seemingly impressive Republican win in the 2014 mid-term elections had overshadowed another trend apparent in the results – a demographic/geographic collapse. The blue wall was a Democratic demographic lock on the Electoral College resulting from the Republican Party's (GOP) narrowing focus on the interests of white, rural, and Southern voters. Ladd's analysis became popular when MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell featured it on a post-election episode of his show The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.[6]

A similar "red wall," behind which lie states solidly Republican, has also been posited to exist[by whom?]. But having fewer votes, it would be theoretically easier for a Democratic presidential candidate to win without breaching it. The Republican party has won just 13 states in each of the last 6 election cycles, totaling 102 electoral votes.

Behind this "blue wall" lay states, many carrying a relatively high number of electoral votes, which appeared to be solidly behind the Democratic Party, at least on the national level, and which a Republican presidential candidate appeared likely to have to write off, seeking a total of 270 electoral votes from other regions. States behind this wall lay generally in the Northeastern United States, and the West Coast of the United States, and included some of the Great Lakes states. In each of the 6 presidential election cycles prior to 2016, the Democratic Party had won 18 of these states (as well as the District of Columbia), totaling 242 of the necessary 270 votes need to win. The "big three" Democratic stronghold states include California, New York, and Illinois.

The states which Republicans have won in the last 7 cycles include Texas (38), Alabama (9), South Carolina (9), Oklahoma (7), Mississippi (6), Utah (6), Kansas (6), Nebraska (4), Idaho (4), South Dakota (3), North Dakota (3), Alaska (3), and Wyoming (3), giving a total of 102 votes. States with a 6-out-of-7 Republican record include Georgia (16), North Carolina (15), Arizona (11), Indiana (11), and Montana (3) for a total of 158 electoral votes. Much of the Southern United States are probably safely Republican as well, as 6 other states from that general region have not voted for a Democrat since southerner Bill Clinton in 1996, and the Deep South is nearly solidly Republican in their senators and governors. In a Seventh Party System, it is possible many other states could join the red wall, especially states such as Kentucky and West Virginia, both of which have gone to the GOP in the last five presidential elections, with Kentucky voting Republican by at least 15 percentage points in each election and West Virginia giving Donald Trump his second-largest victory margin in 2016 (behind Wyoming).

States that traditionally voted blue (Democratic), but voted Republican in 2016 are marked in red. Minnesota (a historic blue wall state), was won by Democrats by only 1.5% and Maine by 3% in 2016. Additionally, northern Maine gave the GOP one electoral vote.

The Democrats' "lock" on these states had been called into question prior to 2016, as several had been competitive in recent elections, and many had Republicans currently holding elected statewide office, generally either senator or governor.[9] Blue wall states with a Republican senator included Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Maine. Those with a Republican governor included Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Maine. In addition to these 18 states, three others, Iowa, New Mexico, and New Hampshire, had only voted for the Republican once in the same 6 election cycles, giving their votes to George W. Bush in either 2000 or 2004, whilst Oregon saw Bush lose by only 7,000 votes in 2000. If included in the total, the votes behind the blue wall numbered 257, just 13 short of what is needed to win. In 2016, the blue wall showed some cracks, and went down from 242 electoral votes to 195. Some in the mainstream media did, however, suspect the Democrats might lose Pennsylvania.

Nate Silver had criticized the idea of the blue wall, pointing to a larger "red wall" of states that voted Republican from 1968 to 1988. He argued that the blue wall simply represented a "pretty good run" in elections, and that relatively minor gains in the popular vote could flip some of its states to Republican.[10] This was seen in the 2016 election, where voters from manufacturing states traditionally behind the blue wall voted for Donald Trump, providing him the victory in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Maine's 2nd congressional district.

^Hawaii was not a state until 1959 and did not vote in presidential elections until 1960.

^Washington was not a state until 1889 and did not vote in presidential elections until 1892.

^Clinton won Maine's statewide vote, but Trump won one of the state's four electoral votes. Since the 1972 election, Maine has awarded two electoral votes to the winner of the statewide popular vote, with one vote going to the winner in each congressional district.